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10 Years Later: From the Desk of the CEO

It is really unbelievable to think that 10 years ago this month The Go! Agency was born with one client, two employees (myself and co-owner Dale Griffen), and a bucketload of dreams for the future.

Flash forward 10 years to today, we have a full roster of clients, talented staff, beautiful offices, and a future pipeline filled to the brim.

Dale and I never thought about what the future would hold when we started The Go! Agency. If you can’t remember what the online world was like back then, let me remind you. While email marketing, blogging, search engine optimization (SEO), and online advertising were fairly proven mediums, social media was the wild west packed with snake oil salespeople. Companies large and small were jumping at the chance to try out this new medium, setting aside large portions of their marketing budgets to give it a whirl. And there were ample “experts”, “gurus”, and the like popping up all over ready to take advantage of that.

At the time, the difference between The Go! Agency and these so-called “gurus” was that we never confessed to be 100% experts. Why? In the constantly changing landscape of social media marketing, we were, and remain merely specialists, as we are continually in learning mode. Other big differences are that we have solid marketing, public relations, and online experience—all keys to being a success. Plus, it was beneficial to have a desire to learn, be agile, and understand that you wouldn’t always get the results you wanted. Some concepts and strategies might have worked amazingly one day, but the next day would be killed and replaced with features that didn’t work and would make you go back to the drawing board. We wanted to approach our prospective and current clients with a holistic approach and offer organic campaigns that would be able to change on a dime and focus on the client’s needs; we were never focused on pushing buttons and cashing checks. Our focus was on client’s success—that was our win. Not making millions of dollars in a matter of months and then fading away.

Fun Fact: One of our biggest direct competitors at the time was highly visible and took on LOTS of business very quickly. That agency lasted only a few years, and two years ago their CEO responded to a job listing I put up for an entry-level Social Media Account Executive. True story.

We wanted our agency to be built differently than others we had observed throughout our professional careers. We wanted ours to be honest, transparent, results driven, and have an intense focus on the client experience. Our desire was to have a roster of clients that were a pleasure to work with, who were invested in success and growth, and that would help us create that almighty win-win-win scenario. Triple wins are my favorite.

When it came to staff, we wanted to hire talented individuals that were interested in creative growth, were engaged with their work, and were focused on their clients. We also wanted to create an environment where there were no office politics, no drama. And if there was, the environment would move these individuals out of the organization organically.

Sitting here today, we’re pleased to say that all of this was achieved. Our current roster of clients is not only diverse, but includes one of the largest international athletic brands (Under Armour) that organically found us based on reputation alone. We will drop everything to help a client on a moment’s notice and the focus is always on them, which is so amazing to see.

Our team is a team. We work together through stressful times and quieter times. Just last month we all went on a company cruise in the Caribbean to blow off steam, bond a little, relax, and zip line! And you know what? Everyone enjoyed one another, no one was avoiding one another—it was relaxing and refreshing.

So is there anything we would change looking back over the last 10 years?

No. Nothing.

Every situation that may have been negative brought forth contemplation and experience that helped us grow stronger as a company. Every employee who didn’t work out, every client that we had to fire, and even those times when the wi-fi didn’t work during an important client meeting…these moments all brought forth a great amount of experience that we are able to now share with our clients.

We’re now in such a sweet position. We’re surrounded by a team of wonderful individuals that we consider not only our team, but also our family. We look out for one another. We work together to get the best results for clients. We are emotionally attached to the work. And to top it all off, we have a roster of clients that respect our team, understand our value, and collaborate with us on taking their success to the next level. See, I really can’t complain.

So where do we go next? Our team and our roster of clients will always evolve, ebb and flow. But our goal is to continue to grow from our vast experience working with clients, one another, and in the marketing industry as a whole to build an even stronger agency that will last for another ten years, and much longer beyond that.

And we will continue to add services as and when we see the need across the board. This year alone we have added a few new services that our clients were eager for that immediately brought them great levels of success and results. So expect much more of that in the future.

Overall, The Go! Agency is about working with companies to provide global solutions that will help them market and sell their businesses with less cost, less time, and more efficiency.

This is why our consulting services are currently one of our fastest-growing services, which I am personally fulfilling. Throughout the last ten years, I was able to really identify where my passion areas were: working strategically within a team, creating marketing and sales scenarios that create proven success, problem solving on a dime, motivating marketing professionals that are overwhelmed, and many more.

Above all, I have identified that one of my true passions is working with individuals and companies collaboratively to solve their problems, work out the kinks in their strategy, and help them reach their true potential. I began offering this here and there to clients as consulting and over the past few years I have been very lucky to worth with hundreds of different companies in this arena…and enjoyed every minute of it. Some call it coaching, others consulting. I call it real talk—and I love being able to help with my direct and honest approach. It brings me lots of joy.

But I digress. The Go! Agency is our heart and soul, and Dale and I couldn’t be prouder of what we as a company have achieved during the last decade. Sitting here and trying to remember all of the many events that we have lived through (recessions, hurricanes, changing political climates) it brings joy to my heart to see that as an agency we have been resilient, stuck to our values, and never altered our ethics for a paycheck. We continue to do work that we believe in, creating amazing results and ROI for clients that believe in us. I think this is a good place to be in, don’t you agree?

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